Dubai Tests Chinese Hover Taxi Drone – Plans to Introduce by July

Dubai has tested a Chinese hover drone it plans to use as an airborne taxi service for its residents as soon as July of this year. Dubai is located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE has set a goal to have 25 percent of their transportation needs done by autonomous vehicles by the year 2030.

Watch: The EHang 184 in Flight

A passenger simply needs to select a destination for the autonomous taxi to take off, fly the route and touch down in the chosen spot monitored by a ground control centre.

“The autonomous aerial vehicle exhibited at the World Government Summit is not just a model,” authority head Mattar al-Tayer said on Monday.

“We have already experimented (with) the vehicle in a flight in (the) Dubai sky,” he said in English.

The authority was “making every effort to start the operation of the autonomous aerial vehicle in July 2017” to help reduce traffic congestion, Tayer said. – AFP

The EHang 184 is an electric aircraft powered by eight propellers and can fly at a speed of 60 miles per hour at an altitude of 1000 feet. The vehicle can be recharged in two hours and has a flight time of about 30 minutes.